The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off. Join Harvard Astronomer Alyssa Goodman on a journey showing how dust in the Milky Way Galaxy condenses into stars and planets. Take a tour with University of Chicago Cosmologist Mike Gladders two billion years into the past to see a gravitational lens bending the light from galaxies allowing you to see billions more years into the past.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelenghts: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.

WWT is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and powerful user interface.

Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe like never before.


Celestial objects radiate energy over an extremely wide range of wavelengths from radio waves to infrared, optical to ultraviolet, x-rays and even gamma rays. However, the physical processes inside these objects can only be understood by combining observations at several wavelengths. 
 
There are many impressive archives painstakingly constructed from observations associated with an instrument, for example, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Each of these archives is interesting in itself and carries important information about the nature of celestial objects, but the comprehensive analysis of observations require the combining data from multiple instruments at different wavelengths. WWT offers access to various temporal and multi-spectral studies astronomic data and literature to anyone with an Internet connection. 
 
Additionally, the data should be accessible so that the gap between cutting-edge research, education, and public knowledge is minimized and is presented in a form that facilitates integrative research. The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a step toward the "democratization" of the conduct of science. The Internet will become, as astronomers put it, "the world´s best telescope"--a supercomputer at your desktop. 
 
The mission of the WWT is twofold: 

• To aggregate scientific data from major telescopes, observatories and institutions and make temporal and multi-spectral studies available through a single cohesive Internet–based portal.
  To re-awaken the interest for science in the younger generations through astronomy and new technologies through the virtual observatory of the WWT. This also provides a wonderful base for teaching astronomy, scientific discovery, and computational science.

The massive amounts of data generated by the various scientific and research facilities is currently hundreds of terabytes and will soon be measured in petabytes. Yet sharing this information is problematic for several reasons. By enabling comparison of data from diverse sources--space and ground, and radio, optical, infrared, and other wavelengths--WWT provides a single Internet-based portal to this unprecedented catalog of data to study the evolving universe. By connecting to the same source materials that scientists at NASA and Caltech are using for their research, WWT is a powerful “virtual observatory” for scientists, educators, and the public. Researching the sky as easy as viewing a Web site and accessible to everyone with an Internet connection. 
 
WWT also contains features to help you explore the Earth, the Moon, the planets and 360 degree panoramas of places such as Mars taken by the NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rovers. 


Steps to download WWT:

• Review the System Requirements to ensure that WWT can run on your computer.
  Click Download.
       If you don't have Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, or later, installed on your computer, a message box
       displays prompting you to install it. Click Yes to go to the .NET Framework 2.0 SDKs, Redistributables
       & Service Packs page.
  On the .NET Framework 2.0 SDKs, Redistributables & Service Packs page, scroll down the page to the .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package section, and then click the link for your computer's architecture and operating system.
  Note  Most computers currently use a 32-bit architecture and operating system and should click the
            Download x86 version.
  On the Microsoft .Net Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package page, read the system requirements to ensure that your computer has all the necessary software installed, and then click Download.
  In the File Download – Security Warning message box, click Run.
  In the Internet Explorer – Security Warning message box, click Run.
  Follow the software installation instructions.
  After the software has been installed, click the Windows Update link to make sure that you have all the latest service packs and security updates. Click Express to review all recommended software and follow the software installation instructions.
  In the File Download – Security Warning message box, click Run.
  In the Internet Explorer – Security Warning message box, click Run.
  Follow the instructions in the WorldWide Telescope Setup Wizard.
  After WWT installs, double-click the WWT icon on your desktop to open WWT.
  

WorldWide Telescope minimum system requirements

For PC:

• PC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 gigahertz (GHz) or faster, recommended
  1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
  3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance
  1 GB of available hard disk space; 10 GB recommended for off-line features and higher performance browsing
  XGA (1024 x 768) or higher resolution monitor
  Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing and scrolling device
  Microsoft® XP SP2 (minimum), Windows® Vista® (recommended)
  Microsoft® DirectX® version 9.0c or later and .NET Framework 2.0 or later
  Required for some features; Internet connection at 56 Kbps or higher through either an Internet service provider (ISP) or a network. Internet access might require a separate fee to an ISP; local or long-distance telephone charges might also apply

For Mac:

• Microsoft® XP SP2 (minimum), Windows® Vista® (recommended) with BootCamp
  Mac with Intel Core 2 Duo (2.2 GHz or faster) processor recommended
  1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM; 2 GB RAM recommended
  NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card with 128-MB SDRAM or recommended
  HFS+ hard disk format (also known as Mac OS® Extended or HFS Plus) and 10 GB of available hard disk space
  1440 x 900 or higher-resolution monitor
  Mouse or compatible pointing device
  Mac OS® X version 10.2 (Jaguar) and Boot Camp; Mac OS X Leopard is recommended
  Microsoft DirectX Runtime 9.0c or later and .NET Framework 2.0 or later
  Required for some features; Internet connection at 56 Kbps or higher through either an Internet service provider (ISP) or a network. Internet access might require a separate fee to an ISP; local or long-distance telephone charges might also apply

Download: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/f/8/1f8763d3-f677-4b35-a0f8-451e6d7eaa8c/setupwwt.exe